Deals include existing tenants Muvico, Chico's, White House Black Market, and newcomers Island Co., Luxottica, and Soma Intimates, said Faith Hope Consolo, the New York-based retail brokerage expert who was hired last July to help with the makeover. Restaurants include a “Two Iron Chefs” concept and a celebrity coffee and desserts concept by New York restaurateur and Food Network personality Donatella Arpaia. Ongoing negotiations include Epicure, J. Crew and a local hair boutique J. Con Salon & Spa, she said.

But Edwards Group Managing Director Joe Jimenez said while “conversations” were under way with those tenants “and a dozen others,” there are not signed leases.

“Are there some letters of intent and deal memos done? Yes,” Jimenez said. “But nothing happens until a lease is fully executed.”

Published reports last year said Food Network’s Iron Chefs Geoffrey Zakarian and Masaharu Morimoto were on board at the center.Jimenez said yes, there are two celebrity chefs “in conversations.” He labeled the Arpaia concept as purely a discussion, and declined to get any more specific.

“We’re not jumping the gun,” he told the Business Journal.

Requests for comment from Zakarian and Arpaia are pending.

Last week, owner Bill Edwards told the Tampa Bay Times that eight national retail tenants have “signed contracts,” with two of them restaurants, all set to debut in the first quarter of 2014. Ever cautious, Edwards said he didn’t want to name names until “everything was in place.”

Consolo said she’s been pushing for details on the signed leases so that she can nail down the handful of deals she’s been working on, and that the caliber of tenants she’s looking to woo always ask who else is on the roster.

“I told [the developers] over and over that fashion follows food and you have to fill holes,” she said.

She believes six months to turn around a center like the former BayWalk was a bit ambitious.

“It takes a year to 18 months to fill,” she said. If this was a new ground-up project and not a previous failure, it would have been “a walk in the park,” she said.

A wealth of images and bad publicity a click away on Google has meant she’s spent a lot of time educating and selling her national retail connections on St. Petersburg, something she said she believes in and is happy to do.

The developers figured the retailers would follow Consolo here but it hasn’t completely worked out that way, she said.

“We are close to Nine West,” she said, again emphasizing her recommendation for a multibrand shoe store as well. “It’s everything from sneakers to stilettos,” she said.

She said she’s “gung-ho” to continue working the deals she has, and still wants to attract a house wares and home goods tenant.

She is hopeful specific food and restaurants can be officially announced soon.

She talked to Crate & Barrel, for example, “and they want to know who is going in on the food,” she said.

“I think I have children’s clothing in place, a great company out of New York called L.O.L. Kids that has all the labels; Armani Junior, Monnalisa, and they have control of European labels under one roof,” she said. “It’s affordable fashion to designer infants to teens apparel in a multiband store, and I pushed that very hard. Another deal is a perfumery and we’re close.”

She’s also working on a spa and beauty deal.

“They wanted a smaller spa than they did originally,” she said, having travelled around Florida looking for a good fit. She believes a spa tenant should be a Florida-based operator because the awareness of regional preferences is important.